Index Industry Association’s Third Annual Survey Finds 2.96 Million Indexes Globally

Index Industry Association (IIA), the first-ever trade association for the index industry, today announced the results of its third annual global index survey. The IIA is the only industry body to quantify the index universe and, according to its latest study, there are 2.96 million indexes globally. According to the IIA’s two previous surveys, the total number of indexes rose from 3.29 million in 2017 to 3.73 million in 2018.

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(Graphic: Business Wire)

While this represents a 20% decrease since last year’s analysis, it appears the lower number is due to the decommissioning of indexes, a process which occurs every year to ensure indexes are not redundant. Previously, this has been offset by the addition of new indexes, but there were a large number of decommissions in both equities and “other” categories in the past year.

Rick Redding, the CEO of IIA commented: “Every firm continuously evaluates their indexes to see if they are redundant, which helps keep costs down for their clients. Ultimately, our members are focused on providing the quality of indexes investors demand that they administer and not necessarily the quantity.”

Fixed Income and ESG Continue Trajectory of Growth

Fixed income was the asset class that increased by the largest amount, achieving 7.15% growth between 2018 and 2019. When looking at fixed income indexes by geography, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) experienced the largest increase in the last year, going from 31% to 33% of the total fixed income indexes, while Global fixed income indexes grew by 1%. EMEA is catching up to the Americas, which now account for 34.24% of fixed income indexes. The Americas and Emerging and Frontier Markets saw modest declines of approximately 1% each, while the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region’s indexes decreased by only 0.5%.

Fueled by investor demand, there has also been impressive growth and innovation in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) indexes over the past year—13.85% across equities and fixed income.

Added Redding, “With three years of data to analyze, we can see interesting trends developing in fixed income and ESG. Index providers are continuing to expand their fixed income offerings to give investors more accurate benchmarks. Moreover, the number and variety of ESG indexes indicate that investors are looking for benchmarks that conform to their investment objectives and beliefs.”

IIA was founded as the first-ever trade association for the index industry and is continuing its expansion to serve the global investor community. Created as a not-for-profit organization for the fast-growing community of index providers, the IIA membership is open to independent index administrators worldwide.

All IIA members separately submitted this information to the IIA and the IIA has not shared it among the members other than in the aggregate form made available to the public. The amount of assets under management benchmarked to these indexes was not in the scope of this project as independent index administrators do not have complete access to this data.

For more information about the IIA or to speak with Rick Redding, please contact Intermarket Communications at [email protected] or +1.212.909.4781.

About Index Industry Association (IIA)

IIA is an independent, not-for-profit organization based in New York that represents the global index industry. Founded in March 2012, the association is the first ever index industry trade body and is committed to representing the global index industry by working with market participants, regulators, and other representative bodies to promote competition and sound practices in the index industry to strengthen markets and serve the needs of investors. Our members have calculated indices since 1896 and today administer approximately three million indices for their respective clients covering a number of different asset classes, including equities, fixed income, commodities, and foreign exchange.

Many of the leading index providers in the world are members of IIA, including Bloomberg Indices, CBOE Global Markets, Chicago Booth Center for Research in Security Prices, China Central Depository and Clearing, FTSE Russell, Hang Seng Indexes, ICE Data Services, IHS Markit, Morningstar, MSCI Inc., Nasdaq Global Indexes, Shenzhen Securities Information Co., Ltd., S&P/Dow Jones Indices, STOXX, and Tokyo Stock Exchange. Further information on IIA is available at www.indexindustry.org.

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